September 1, 2009 - “Guiding Light,” the CBS daytime drama, will air its final episode on Friday, September 18 as the longest running show in broadcast history. The show celebrates a seventy-two year history as both a radio serial and a television series.

“Guiding Light” launched the careers of several Hollywood personalities, dramatized relevant social issues and has been awarded numerous accolades, including an unprecedented 70 Daytime Emmy awards.

The show debuted as a 15-minute radio show in 1937 and made the move to television in 1952. It has led daytime and prime-time drama programming in dramatizing important social issues such as discrimination against women in the 1940s and teen alcoholism and drug abuse in the 1980s.

The show has raised awareness about the effects of real-life medical conditions such as uterine cancer, postpartum depression, AIDS, Down syndrome, leukemia and breast cancer. It was also the launching pad for the careers of Kevin Bacon, James Earl Jones, Allison Janney, and Taye Diggs to name a few.

This past June, Mayor Bloomberg acknowledged the CBS daytime drama at the fourth annual "Made in NY" Awards. The show, which the Guinness Book of World Records named the world’s longest-running TV drama, has been based in New York City since 1949 when it was a radio serial.